Friday 18 August 2006, 6 pm ABC1

Census 2006

Black Tracker is a 1990s ABC documentry about the late police officer and tracker Sergeant Riley produced by the late Michael Riley. At its wrap up there is a beautiful piece of classsical music which then lasts throughout the creidts. The name of the music is not in the credits. ...

The Aboriginal population is one of the fastest growing and youngest is the nation. On census night 8th August most Australians of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage will tick the box identifying them as Indigenous – but what does this mean today and for the future of the Indigenous peoples?

Transcript

Transcript of Program

ADEN RIDGEWAY: Hello and welcome to Message Stick. I'm Aden Ridgeway. The Aboriginal population is the fastest growing in Australia. It's a young population with almost 60% under the age of 25 years. August 8 was census night, when people across the country were supposed to fill in the census form. So, what will this information tell us about our population and our future, and especially, for that matter, our health and our housing? Is the old definition of being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander still relevant? Do you tick the box that so many forms ask? Message Stick producer Miriam Corowa investigates what the census means and how our diverse population across the country is growing and changing.

MIRIAM COROWA: Every five years, Australians take a snapshot of the country on census night.

MAN GIVING SPEECH: For this census, there is much more emphasis on the human side in our promotional activities. We decided that an iconic activity like the census could be well promoted by the use of another well-known Australian, Ernie Dingo.

ERNIE DINGO IN 2006 ABS CENSUS ADVERTISEMENT: The information you give is vital for the future of...

KIDS: Education!

ERNIE DINGO: 'Bye, kids!

KIDS: 'Bye, Ernie!

MAN: Housing.

ERNIE DINGO: Housing.

MAN: Health care.

ERNIE DINGO: Health care.

NURSE: Excuse me.

ERNIE DINGO: Crikey!

MAN: Transport.

ERNIE DINGO: Thank you.

WOMAN: Business.

ERNIE DINGO: Thank you.

MIRIAM COROWA: Data on housing and population is collected from every household to help plan for current and future needs nationwide.

ERNIE DINGO: So make sure you fill in your census form. Australia's counting on you.

MIRIAM COROWA: And bringing Indigenous communities into the picture as one of Australia's most disadvantaged groups is a top priority for the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

JACKIE HUGGINS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, ATSISU, UNI OF QUEENSLAND: It's very important, I think, for Indigenous people to sign up to the census because it does pave the way and it does say, "Well, look, there are X amount of people in this community who want housing," you know? X amount of people in this community the have done tertiary education. Where are we falling behind in the statistics? Where is the barometer of change that needs to happen?

MIRIAM COROWA: This concern is one factor motivating Glenda Roberts to reach out to Indigenous households across NSW and the ACT. She is one of seven state Indigenous managers at the Australian Bureau of Statistics who've worked hard to make sure all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make it into the census count this year.

GLENDA ROBERTS, ABS STATE INDIGENOUS MGR, NSW/ACT: It's a huge operation, the census. And there's around 30,000 people Australia-wide and there's about 9,000 to 10,000 people in NSW alone who will be working on the census. In NSW we'll also have over 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders working on the census, which I think reflects what an effort the ABS is making to ensure that we do get that accurate count.

MIRIAM COROWA: Numerous strategies have been developed by the Bureau of Statistics to encourage greater participation by Indigenous people.

MAN: OK, are you Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?

WOMAN: Aboriginal.

MIRIAM COROWA: In remote areas, local collectors are recruited from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to gather census information in sit-down interviews, using forms designed to be more culturally appropriate than those distributed to the general population.

GLENDA ROBERTS, ABS STATE INDIGENOUS MGR, NSW/ACT: But in urban areas, because in NSW, the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders don't live in our discrete communities. What we do have is Indigenous assistants who will help those people fill out the forms, because just because you don't live on a discrete community doesn't necessarily mean that you have good literacy and numeracy skills. So at the end of the day I suppose you could say if we don't get an accurate count for a community, are the services for that community meeting the demand?

MIRIAM COROWA: It's an important question, and one not lost on social justice commissioner Tom Calma, the nation's watch dog on the condition of Indigenous Australians.

TOM CALMA, SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMISSIONER: The situation of Indigenous Australians at the moment in comparison to non-Indigenous Australians is fairly stark. In almost all of the indicator areas, we're finding out that there's whole-scale disadvantage for Indigenous people. In the health area we find that Indigenous people are dying, their life expectation is about 17 years less than a non-Indigenous person. We're finding out that access to health is limited. We're finding in many communities, in remote communities, there's overcrowding in housing, there's high unemployment rates, and those unemployment figures vary around the country. In the education system there's still a long way to go.

TEACHER: Alright now, remember your user name and your password?

TOM CALMA, SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMISSIONER: We have high truancy in a number of areas. We have low participation rates all the way through in comparison to non-Indigenous people. And our outcomes from, say, Year 12, which is a general indicator, is far less.

MIRIAM COROWA: According to the commissioner, imprisonment rates are another sign that Indigenous Australians have fallen behind the rest of the country. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make up 2.4% of the total population, but account for 22% of all prison inmates.

TOM CALMA, SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMISSIONER: All of these could be directly related to poor self-esteem by individuals, lack of empowerment, lack of skills, which are attributed back to education, and even before education, primary health care and our health status impacts on our capacity to attend school, our capacity to participate in employment. And when that doesn't happen we end up being in a lower socio-economic group. All of these impact on our health, and so we need to address them all and look at it wholistically.

MIRIAM COROWA: Here in northern NSW the small community of Baryulgil wakes up to another day without a resident doctor or a shop or many of the other things taken for granted in bigger towns like Grafton, which is more than an hour's drive away. And with the last census in 2001 revealing up to a quarter of Indigenous people live in remote areas, it's a reality faced by many other communities.

SLOANE DONNELLY: With the shop, we used to have a shop here. that closed down, oh, many years ago now. But it's something that we really need. You have to go into Grafton to shop. It's best to bulk buy as you can't afford to go in every day. Like I said, it's an hour out and you need at least a good $20-$30 in your tank just to make sure that you can get back to the shops again. A lot of times you'll be out here and you'll have relos that will run out of petrol, so it's always good to keep extra petrol around. If you don't have your own vehicle then you do have to rely on public transport, which is the community bus. That comes once a week, every Thursday. Other than that, the high school bus, 7:00 in the morning, doesn't get in until 4:45, 5:00 in the afternoon.

MIRIAM COROWA: With medical visits to Baryulgil limited to once or twice a fortnight, the issue of health care is a major concern, and prevention is far better than a cure, especially when you could be facing a lengthy wait for treatment.

DOCTOR: Do you eat fruit most days when you're at school?

GIRL: Yes. DOCTOR: Yep. Do you like it? That's good.

MIRIAM COROWA: Doctor Ray Jones has overseen a nutrition program here for the past three years which has dramatically cut rates of ear infections among primary school children and reduced the risk of deafness. But in this tiny community of around 100 people, many still find it hard to maintain a good standard of living and have moved closer into town.

SLOANE DONNELLY: Like, with the jobs and schooling, a lot of people actually tend to move into Grafton. Grafton's pretty central. It's a lot easier if the kids, especially the high school kids, if they are closer to high school then they don't have to get up two, three hours before they go to school and wear themselves out before they get to school. And then what the parents mainly do is bring the kids back out for the weekends so that they're not in town causing any chaos or getting into any mischief. With the jobs, you'd have to go more into Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Lismore. Out here there's nothing besides doing the TAFE or the CDEP. Other than that, no. Or unemployment.

MIRIAM COROWA: A major social trend revealed in previous census counts shows Indigenous people are moving to urban areas in greater numbers, but life there also brings its share of hardship. In Sydney, new arrivals often head straight to Redfern, an inner-city suburb where serious health and housing problems have plagued the local Aboriginal community for decades.

VIRGINIA HICKEY: I sort of was on the block before the Block. So we stayed until the last house got knocked down, then we ended up in Eveleigh, Vine and Caroline St, living. My... I've got three children. My second one, Maxine, she was born on the Block. 63 Eveleigh St, she was born. And then life was pretty fair to us there. We used to have a preschool. And I also worked at the Settlement. I started off with 25 children, ended up with 600, about 18 of them on the floor in my bedroom. But everyone was happy. We had enough food, money, culture. And everyone was sharing and caring. And then about 10 years later, the drugs started getting bad. So I put in for a transfer and moved to Waterloo. I still stay there today. We do not sleep upstairs. 16 years fighting with the Housing Commission to renovate this place. My grandson doesn't sleep upstairs. Harassment on my children. (Sighs) It's like living in WWII. It's like a holocaust all over again, and this has happened right through my life.

MIRIAM COROWA: Statistics recorded in every census since 1971, when Indigenous Australians were first included, show that improvements are slow in coming, something that's been closely monitored since the creation of an Indigenous branch of the ABS 20 years ago, now directed by Dan Black.

DAN BLACK, DIRECTOR, NCATSIS: In terms of gathering statistical data and in cooperation and participation by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in things like the census, we do much better, I think, than other countries do. We have quite a strong record there on both sides. From the ABS point of view and from the help we get from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. In terms of closing the gap, the evidence is, over the last 30 years and in other countries, that a lot of patience is perhaps required, and that's something that's hard to bear at times, I think.

MIRIAM COROWA: But the task of the Bureau of Statistics is purely to provide the facts. The issue of service delivery falls outside the scope of the ABS, and instead raises questions about the effectiveness of government policies.

JACKIE HUGGINS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, ATSISU, UNI OF QUEENSLAND: Well, some people say now that we've gone back 30 years, and I think there's an element of truth within that, with the mainstreaming of our services, with no national representative body. With a lot of non-Indigenous people working in bureaucracies now and providing service delivery to our people without having the full cultural knowledge and content. Um, issues like that, I think, which our communities feel very much aggrieved at.

TOM CALMA, SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMISSIONER: I think we've got a situation in government where we've got some ministers who are trying to direct where Indigenous affairs goes. And they're not doing that in close participation and active involvement of Indigenous people. Leadership means that you walk hand in hand and not run ahead and expect everybody to come up. It doesn't mean that you put in draconian, punitive measures to address situations. It means that you've got to work together with people. And I think that seems to be lacking. Now, there are a lot of good things that the Government are doing. They talk the talk, but it's translating that into action.

MIRIAM COROWA: And when little seems to be changing for the better, it can be hard to motivate people to take part in government initiatives such as the census. When people go to fill out forms,

JACKIE HUGGINS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, ATSISU, UNI OF QUEENSLAND: there's going to be a total mistrust of the system, because this was the system that denied our Aboriginality, that took our children away, and that continues to foster a relationship that really needs to be worked out between bureaucracies and Indigenous communities and people.

MIRIAM COROWA: And that's not the only hurdle the census can encounter.

GLENDA ROBERTS, ABS STATE INDIGENOUS MGR, NSW/ACT: Government departments such as Centrelink would probably fear within people's hearts, that we won't fill out the forms accurately or we won't say how many people are living in our house, because if I do I could lose my Centrelink benefits, or Department of Housing. I have an overcrowding issue within my home. I could lose my rebates if I fill out this form. And same with possibly the Department of Community Services - overcrowding, providing inadequate care. We need to ensure that all people, especially our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, that nobody will get these forms and no individual person can be identified with the statistics that we actually publish.

MIRIAM COROWA: The ABS goes to great lengths to protect the information collected in the census, and all statistics officers are legally bound to secrecy.

GLENDA ROBERTS, ABS STATE INDIGENOUS MGR, NSW/ACT: Once all the information's actually collected it is then sent off to our Melbourne processing office where it gets processed, and then once it gets processed the information gets destroyed. Information on this year's census won't be available till next year.

MIRIAM COROWA: But if the results of the 2006 census are anything like the past two, there will be at least one positive change for Indigenous Australians.

DAN BLACK, DIRECTOR, NCATSIS: We've seen very strong growth in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. And the birth rates are much higher than for the non-Indigenous population. As a result we've got a very young Indigenous population, and that has all sorts of ramifications for delivery of services and so on. But I think the strong growth rate should be seen as a positive thing.

MIRIAM COROWA: In addition to natural increase, we're also seeing high numbers of people finding out they're Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander later in life.

WOMAN: My name is Melissa. I started on the search some years ago, especially after my daughter died, so around '79. Because the death of my daughter brought on the memories of my grandmother, and I wanted to...I always had a feeling she was Aboriginal, that there was something Aboriginal in me.

MIRIAM COROWA: Melissa's not alone. Ticking the box to identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander for the first time is an act that's been repeated by thousands of others still new in the knowledge of their Indigenous roots.

JAKALENE: I suddenly felt, when I came on the Block, I just felt normal. For the first time in my life I fitted in somewhere, you know? I fitted in. There was dysfunction in my family. There was drugs, there was crime, there was police, there was this, there was that. There was spirituality, there was love, there was, you know, that sort of thing. So I really did feel quite at home. So I started thinking, "Jeez, I don't know - I don't think my grandmother's Spanish at all." So I studied my diploma in Aboriginal studies, and we were doing family trees as part of the course. And so I started doing my family tree, and evidently that led me back to Nan in Melbourne, where she was sick in a nursing home and confronted her about "Are we black?" And you know, got told yes.

MIRIAM COROWA: Since then Jakalene hasn't looked back. Through her rap performances as Jakalene Extreme she's gained a growing profile as an Indigenous artist. But she says acceptance from the wider community is sometimes lacking.

JAKALENE: As an actor I would never get picked to go for black parts, 'cause they are looking for somebody who...on the outside. So what they're promoting in their media of what actually black is, we get lost. We get lost. So why, why should we be any less because of the way we look?

What is the person's ancestry? So we've got to tick...what's our bloods. Well, I've got Irish. Aboriginal. And Serbian. That's not on there. I'll just put that - Serbian - for my dad.

MIRIAM COROWA: Reconnecting with their pasts has come at a high cost for both Jakalene and Melissa. Each of their families has struggled to understand their decisions to embrace their hidden heritage.

JAKALENE: I've lost my family over this. I've lost 10 brothers and sisters and, and a mother. My father is the only person who speaks to me in my family and he's a full-blood Serbian man. The rest of my family do not talk to me. So it's, it's, it's, it, it's that strong for me, what I feel and what I'm standing up for, and what I believe to be the truth, um, that I've had to give my family up for this. So it's very, very, can be very, very upsetting for families.

MELILSSA: That, you know, people have got to stop hiding it, you know. It's like, I suppose like the gays had to, they're supposed to come out of the cupboard some years ago. Now it's time the Aboriginal people stood up and said, "Right, we're Aboriginal..."

MIRIAM COROWA: What can make it even harder is the perception that some people are choosing to declare their Indigenous identity only for financial gain.

JAKALENE: I refuse to go to Aboriginal Housing to ask for a house. I refuse to go to the medical centre. I refuse to get any Aboriginal Government funding.

JACKIE HUGGINS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, ATSISU, UNI OF QUEENSLAND: There is within our community still, that seething hostility to those people who are in fact fakes. I'm not talking about the people who want to come in and find their people, or have suddenly thought, "Well, you know, I am Aboriginal." What I have exception to are those people who will ring up and say to us here, even at the university, "You know, I've just found out my great great grandmother is...has been Aboriginal. What do I get?" And, you know, if I'm on the other end of the phone I will say, "You will get a life expectancy of 17 years less than that of a non-Indigenous person, You will get diabetes, heart, lung, liver, kidney disease, by the time you're 40, and all those horrible health statistics that are associated with that. And you will get sick and tired of going to funerals every week." But if we throw our hands up and do nothing, then I think that's a real cop out. And we need everybody to be working together, you know, in the true spirit of reconciliation, to really bring forth a better service delivery, a better, um, a better society for Indigenous peoples.

MIRIAM COROWA: The efforts made by the Bureau of Statistics serve as a first step to addressing the massive disadvantage faced by many Indigenous Australians, whether urban or remote. But the vital roll the census can play in helping to turn people's lives around will only be realised if everyone's prepared to stand up and be counted.

JAKALENE: And I'm sure we could be maybe 4% of the...of the population, if these people that are coming up and telling me in my ear that, "Yeah, I've got a bit of black," or "I've got a little..." If they, you know, are following their identity and, and thingo, we could be even a higher population.

PETER COSTELLO: Population matters. Demography is destiny.

MAN: The information provided in the census, you know, it cannot be underestimated the value that that is in being able to provide guidance to government, to be able to determine policies and programs, that are going to be leading towards the improvement of, of services, improvement to the living standards, improvements to the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people.

PETER COSTELLO: Remember, baby or no baby, on the night of Tuesday, 8 August, we all have a date with our census form and I wish it every success. Thank you very much.

ERNIE DINGO: If you, if you know what's in front of you, you can build towards a future of it. If you estimate what's in front of you, we may over-capitalise.

JACKIE HUGGINS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, ATSISU, UNI OF QUEENSLAND: And I believe, as with the census, you know, that people really do need to get involved, because that is what our people, our ancestors fought for. That's what they struggled for many years ago. And to deny that is to deny them a place in the struggle.

PETER COSTELLO: Thank you all very much. Good luck with the census.

ADEN RIDGEWAY: Well, that's all for this week. Thanks for joining us. And if you want more information, check out our Message Stick website.